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Monthly Archives: April 2013

Today’s Typographic Tuesday honors National Poetry Month here in America and it’s brought to you by big dose of serendipity (which, I love): this morning I asked my yoga instructor Shannon after class if she could recommend a great dog poem and her eyes lit up. The book she was holding in her hands is by one of her favorite poets, Mary Oliver, and she quickly found this one for me. I knew it would be perfect, a little bit sad but mostly uplifting and tender. Shannon is a very talented artist, and I’ve wanted to feature her work here for a while and as it turns out, one of the three watercolors of hers that I own is this one titled “Dog on Beach”. That makes me want to say “spoooooky…” but I’m just going to say “ommmmmmmm!” Thanks, Shannon!

“The First Time Percy Came Back” is from A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver. A great bio—and a lovely photo with her dog—can be found here.

Yesterday’s post was about London-based photographer Martin Usborne, but there was more to tell (what else is new?). So I decided to chop it into two posts, and with today’s entry you can get your hands on one of his prints for a very good price AND help him save a little puppy called Mango from the meat trade at the same time.

It starts out like this: Martin loves animals and he decided to embark on a yearlong journey around the world to save as many as he can, and he’s named the project “A Year to Help”. Now I realize that sounds kind of granola and lofty and flowers-in-meadows, but this is also a personal odyssey for Martin. He’s a guy who, like a lot of us, has enormous compassion for animals but questions what he does with it on a daily basis. So he set out last July to do what he can, however he can. And when he says animals, he’s not excluding any species: he’s serving as savior to bugs as well. Here’s the manifesto from his project’s website:

1. Whenever I come across an animal in distress I must help (fruit flies included).
2. I must follow my heart, not my head. Ignore the nagging intellect Martin!
3. This project is deadly serious. Therefore I will try and be funny where possible.
4. I must risk failure, confusion and utter humiliation.
5. My allegiance is to the animals, not to any charity or religion.
6. I must stop eating bacon.

You can see that Martin has a good sense of humor. Read his “About the Project” page here for more of his reasoning behind his idea. It’s open, honest, and very entertaining, I must say. You’ll wonder if you’ve stumbled into a script for a new Ricky Gervais program or something.

At the moment, Martin is in the Philippines spending some time with a group called Network for Animals. In the last few days they’ve saved a puppy from the street where they sell dogs for the meat trade and named her Mango. He’s promised to get her back to the UK, and must raise at least £750 to do so. So he’s taken some beautiful photographs of her and is selling them through his project’s website to raise the money.

This one is my favorite. You can’t beat that stare of hope and expectation for keeping you up at night. If you’re thinking, “but it’s just one dog and there are so many in the same boat”, I’d say that’s true. But to this one lucky little Mango, giving her a chance is everything. Here are some others:

There are also options with some added typography with a punch. I think Mango does a super job as a pin-up queen:

…and with a dash of Martin’s good humor. Or humour, I suppose:

So far Mango has been checked out by a vet and she’s become much more affectionate after getting some good meals in her tummy. It turns out getting off the chain and out of the grimy street is also a plus. Overall I think she’d say that it’s much better getting dinner than being dinner.

If you’d like to donate to Martin’s effort of getting Mango safely back to the UK and into a safe, loving home read his post here with the instructions on placing your photograph order (or just donating). The hardest part is deciding which print to get and what size.

If you can, please share this post to spread the word. You can also follow Martin’s journey on his Facebook page here.

The official “A Year to Help” project site can be found here.
Martin’s photography website can be found here.All images courtesy and copyright Martin Usborne.

Martin Usborne is a London-based photographer with an affinity for dogs. And if you’re lucky enough to be in London yourself before April 27 you can see work from his series The Silence of Dogs in Cars at The Little Black Gallery. Every time I look at these images, I get a lump in my throat and feel very emotional, almost to tears in fact. Now these dogs weren’t really abandoned, but you can definitely sense that’s how they’re feeling to varying degrees.

Normally my first reaction to the idea of dogs being left alone in cars is the danger of heat exhaustion. Maybe that’s why all of these were taken at night or during overcast conditions to eliminate that thought—or it’s just typical weather in England. For me, once I realize there’s no threat of heat exhaustion, immediately they become about something else.

Here is the statement by the artist, Martin Usborne:

“I was once left in a car at a young age.

I don’t know when or where or for how long, possibly at the age of four, perhaps outside a supermarket, probably for fifteen minutes only. The details don’t matter. The point is that I wondered if anyone would come back. In a child’s mind it is possible to be alone forever.

Around the same age I began to feel a deep affinity with animals—in particular their plight at the hands of humans. I saw a TV documentary that included footage of a dog being put in a plastic bag and being kicked. What appalled me most was that the dog could not speak back. Its muteness terrified me.

I should say that I was a well-loved child and never abandoned and yet it is clear that both these experiences arose from the same place deep inside me: a fear of being alone and unheard.

The images in this series explore that feeling, both in relation to myself and to animals in general. The dog in the car is a metaphor, not just for the way that animals (both domestic and wild) are so often silenced and controlled by humans but for the way that we so often silence and control the darker parts of ourselves: the fear and loneliness that we would rather keep locked away.”

Gulp. These images are 24 x 36 and 60 x 40, so I’m thinking that to see them in person would be even more compelling. If you’re like me and there’s no way you’ll be in London before the show ends, there is a beautiful book available.

If you’d like some information on Martin’s show in London at The Little Black Gallery, price list, or interviews with the artist, it’s here.

A signed copy of Martin’s book The Silence of Dogs in Cars can be purchased here. And if you’d just like more information on Martin in general, you can visit his website here.All images courtesy and copyright Martin Usborne.

This week’s episode of Typographic Tuesday is brought to us by Vienna-based design studio grafisches Büro with their playful exploration of dogs as fonts. Kind of a fun project, this limited edition poster makes you look at your own dogs and wonder where they might fit in the wild and wacky world of typography. But please, whatever you do…please don’t assign your pup to the horrors of Comic Sans! Why, that would just be cruel.